Infant trafficking is on the rise in Kuwait, with babies being offered for sale for $830 each, a senior ministry official has warned.

Haitham Al Othman, manager of the interior ministry’s vice and anti-trafficking department, told a workshop hosted by the Kuwait Society for Human Rights that there had been a number of recent cases involving midwives purchasing illegitimate children from mothers, before selling them on to buyers who registered them at their countries’ embassies.

“It is already sad enough that human trafficking is becoming a fact in a country like Kuwait that cares for humanity and humane activities, but this is a disaster,” the official said.

Othman said selling illegal babies was a strange phenomenon in Kuwait and that several such cases take place at the maternity hospital on a daily basis, Al Rai reported.

Kuwaiti detectives recently arrested a Filipina who worked as a midwife for women who got pregnant outside wedlock and wished to get rid of their babies, selling each baby for $830. The accused still had several infants waiting to be sold after being arrested.